Civil Offence

Civil offence was a term of art in United Kingdom military law. Under the Army Act 1955 and the Air Force Act 1955, a civil offence meant any act or omission punishable by the law of England, or that would be punishable by that law if committed in England; this definition was considered by the House of Lords in Cox v Army Council in 1963. Section 42 of the Naval Discipline Act 1957 defined a civil offence in the same terms. The Armed Forces Act 2006 replaced the concept with the offence of criminal conduct under its own section 42. Despite the name, describing an ordinary civil wrong as a civil offence is a misnomer, since the term applied only within military law to conduct that would otherwise be a criminal matter. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/